Don't expect to see Deputy Rick Grimes make an appearance in the first episode of Telltale's comic-based The Walking Dead video game series. The hero of the series will be sleeping away the first installment in a coma while creators explorer what supporting cast members were getting up to at the time.

Deputy Rick gets plenty of the spotlight as it is, being the focal point of both Robert Kirkman's long-running comic book series and the hit AMC television series. The game gives rise to a very different sort of hero in Lee Everett, a criminal on his way to prison that finds himself freed by the zombie apocalypse. Lost and alone, Lee stumbles into Clementine, a young girl abandoned by her parents. Together the pair makes their way through the transformed world, Lee's actions reflected in the eyes of an impressionable young child.

But it's not all about new characters. In the first episode we'll get to see what characters like Glenn and Herschel were up to before they met up with a significantly less comatose Rick Grimes. The developers are using the game as an opportunity to explore how the supporting cast came to be the way they were when they first appeared in the comic book series.

Having read every issue of the book so far, I'm looking forward to taking a deeper look at the characters I've been travelling with all these years.

This is the first episode of Telltale's cleverly-named "Playing Dead" series of behind-the-scenes videos, launching today along with the game's official website. Bookmark it for more inside information on what's coming up in the epic five episode side-story.